from "A Heap of Broken Images" Ben Powis's graphic response to "The Waste Land": an introduction by Sean Bishop In the last decade, comic book art has lost some of the stigma associated with greasy-haired figurine collectors, becoming more and more respected in the larger artistic and literary communities. “Graphic novel” has become a household term, and crowds of art-house theater-goers stand in long lines to see film adaptations of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor or Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Yet where are all the “graphic poems?” Why hasn't that term entered the lexicon alongside "graphic novel?" When Gulf Coast began brainstorming a feature of comic book art, we decided to highlight the lesser-known lyric strengths of the form. And what better way to do this, we thought, than to commission a graphic interpretation of The Waste Land?  [more] Men Who Punched Me in the Face Jennine Capó Crucet The other guys on the football team called him Vick the Dick, and he said it was because he had a huge one, but I wouldn’t have known then since his was the first one I ever saw. Victor was half Cuban—half decent, my dad used to say—and half some sort of Venezuelan-Ecuadorian mix. My mother declared him The Best Looking Guy To Ever Talk To Me three minutes after meeting him. He had this hard-line chin and perfect eyebrows that looked like a professional Hialeah beautician had sculpted them. He never got carded when he ordered beer at El Rey Pizza. He could grow a beard in two hours.  [more] from "Of the Parrat and other birds that can speake" Nick Lantz When you buy the bird for your mother you hope it will talk to her. But weeks pass before it does anything except pluck the bars with its beak. Then one day it says, “infect.” Your mother tells you this on the phone, and you drive over, find the frozen meals you bought for her last week sweating on the countertop. “In fact,” she says in answer to your question, “I have been eating,” and it’s as you point to the empty  [more] from "The Wilhelm Scream" Elena Passarello From birth, our vocal cords work like fingerprints, telling unique tales of our specific bodies. The sounds they make bounce around inside us and convert tones into nametags: Hello, my larynx is this large. Hello, my sinuses are stuffed with mucus. Hello, my diaphragm is stretched tight; listen to its shape as I spring air from it like a trampoline. Pleased to meet you.  [more] from "Do You Think We'll Be Able to Love Again?" Gulf Coast picks Chuck Klosterman's brain CK: This is a nonfiction era. Nonfiction is what matters right now. I wrote a novel because I wanted to write a novel, but I don’t think fiction has much cultural import anymore. I don’t think novels are shaping the way people think about the world, regardless of their merit as art. That’s too bad, but that’s the way it is. I think it’s telling that the biggest fiction books in the world right now—even for adults—are escapist young-adult novels about wizards and vampires. I mean, how weird is that? Not weird at all, I suppose.  [more]